Intel Unleashes 'Grantley' Server Chips

Intel's new Haswell-based Xeon processors are aimed at general-purposed servers and powerful workstations.

Intel on Monday rolled out its latest batch of cutting-edge server and workstation processors, the Xeon E5-2600 and E5-1600 v3 product families formerly code named Grantley.

The chip giant is promising a performance boost of up to 3x over the previous generation Xeon chips, as well as "world-class energy efficiency and enhanced security." The chips in the Xeon E5-2600 family, featuring processors with up to 18 individual central processing cores, are being billed as general-purpose workhorses for back-end applications ranging from data analytics, high-performance computing (HPC), telecommunications, cloud-based services, and support for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Intel is positioning its new Xeon E5-1600 chips for powerful workstations, with prices for the six different processors in the new family ranging from $295 to $1,723. The 26 different Xeon E5-2600 parts range in price from $213 to $2,702 in quantities of 1,000, the company said.

"The digital services economy imposes new requirements on the data center, requirements for automated, dynamic, and scalable service delivery," Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group said in a statement. "Our new Intel processors deliver unmatched performance, energy efficiency, and security, as well as provide visibility into the hardware resources required to enable software defined infrastructure. By enabling the re-architecture of the data center, Intel is helping companies fully exploit the benefits of cloud-based services."

Intel's new Grantley processors are based on its 22-nanometer "Haswell" processor architecture, featuring first-gen "3D" Tri-Gate transistors. The company recently launched the first chips manufactured with its next-gen 14nm process technology, ultra-low power mobile processors dubbed Core M, but will be moving various other product lines like Xeon to that cutting-edge process node over several quarters.

Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy, said the raw performance boost with Grantley was not the big story with these new Xeon chips. Instead, Intel has made important, incremental improvements in a number of areas with its new Xeon products, particularly in the maturation of its top server platforms.

"Intel has again raised the data center bar with the Haswell-based Grantley. While not a huge integer performance increase, Intel has added a lot more cores, increased frequencies, added DDR4 for lower power and higher speed, and finally, improved the platform around it," Moorhead said.

"Arguably, platform improvements like 40-gigabit Ethernet could be more important. All of Intel's key OEMs, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and IBM have brought brand new platforms or features to the table. Enterprises really need to strongly consider moving to Grantley-based products immediately. It could save them a lot of OPEX dollars, but more importantly, set them up for the next stage of a software-defined infrastructure."

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
More »